Remote Work Tips During COVID-19 for Boat Dealers

Let’s talk about remote work tips. The COVID-19 outbreak has limited most people’s ability to leave their home. Because of this, remote work is becoming more popular than ever.

The boating industry is not one typically associated with remote work. However, there are many ways that business owners are adapting to keep their operations afloat at this time.

Boat dealers, who are used to working out of their brick and mortar location, might find making the adjustment to working remote difficult. We are a digital agency with experience in remote work and in the boating industry. We’ve compiled some tips for working from home and limiting social interaction while keeping your company operating as normally as possible.

First and foremost, we advise you to stay on top of your state or county regulations on what businesses can be open. We want to give you advice on how to your business running with remote work tips, but you should also make sure you are complying your government’s guidelines.

Digital Tools for Working from Home

The first thing you will need to do is check with your employees. Do they have proper devices? Internet? Work with them to provide what is needed.

In addition to that, we have a few digital tools that we have personal experience with. These can be helpful when working from home.

• Office 365 gives users tools such as Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more, and allows you to keep work on the cloud using OneDrive.
• Slack is a communication tool that allows our team to instantly message back and forth. You can set up channels specific to different projects or topics to keep your communications organized. It also allows you to make calls or video chat. This is great for communicating internally and checking in with your team as they work remotely.
• Zoom is a tool that allows you to have remote meetings, both with clients and internally. You can call in or access it in your desktop and you can use video and screen sharing. This can be used to do remote sales consultations and demos.
• RingCentral allows you to get phone calls remotely. It forwards calls through an app on your phone and allows you to transfer calls internally as well.
• Egnyte is a file-sharing system that allows us to access all important files remotely. This is great if you have any sales material, like videos, photos, or documents, that you want your team to easily be able to access remotely and have it all stored in one place.

How To Keep Boat Sales Running

For those who own their own boats, boating is a great way to practice safe social distancing and still get outside and enjoy nature. That means there is still a demand for boat sales during Covid-19.

For those who have been budgeting for this purchase, they still want to be able to get the boat they’ve been planning for.

The truth is most salesmen have experience with being able to help customers in unexpected ways; whether it’s working remotely with a customer that isn’t in your location or selling a boat when they’re at a boat show and not in their normal office.

We recommend you keep your phone line running and keep following up with online leads. Make sure all your sales team is set up with a computer, a camera so they can video conference (whether it’s on their computer or their phone), and access to their work email and phone.

Allow customers to book private appointments with the sales team can offer private appointments at your location where you keep a safe distance from customers. You can also offer virtual consultations or boat demos over video conferencing tools like Zoom or even over FaceTime. Some manufacturers even offer “virtual reality” walkthroughs of boats, so be sure to check with your manufacturers if they are offering any of these resources.

This is also a great time to make sure your website is up to date. By allowing customers to browse inventory online this will save them being able to get as much information as possible without having to come into your facility.

How To Keep Boat Service Running

Boat service is more of a tricky thing to operate remotely, but there are a few things you can implement to keep your employees and customers safe.

We recommend (depending on your state’s regulations) if you can keep things running, make sure to make it by appointment only and prompt your customers to call ahead with their requests to limit foot traffic.

You can utilize your website to have customers book appointments or if you have call forwarding set up, you can have an employee working from home to handle bookings. Be sure to have any employees you need on-site to handle services follow proper sanitizing procedures and social distancing guidelines.

Get Help from A Digital Agency

Now more than ever, we’re learning the importance of your business having a digital presence.

Boat Marketing Pros is a digital agency that specializes in marketing for the boating industry. We want to help you navigate the COVID-19 crisis and keep your business running and thriving.

We have several COVID-19 resources available and are offering free consultations. Please contact us for more information and remote work tips!